


A Gift of Stones (A Palimpsest)

by ElectraRhodes



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Non Linear Narrative, Pre and post fall, Ravage - Freeform, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 13:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectraRhodes/pseuds/ElectraRhodes
Summary: ‘They think him a genial curiosity. Quaint even. With his books, and his accent, and his kindness to the neighbour’s dogs. They think him unremarkable and even soft, with his penchant for good food and a decent wine, with his support for the orchestra and his patronage of the gallery and a local artist. They think him a benevolent presence in their midst.He is still smoke and mirrors.’My story for the Ravage Anthology
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44
Collections: RAVAGE - An Infernal Hannibal Anthology





	A Gift of Stones (A Palimpsest)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the lovely Jamie and Romina for all your hard work and your many kindnesses.

A gift of stones (A Palimpsest)

His hands. His hands are still beautiful. His heart as strong as ever. Alive, so alive. So alive. 

But. But, so often, for so much of the time, it’s only barely enough. 

“Before you, and after you.” And later still. “With you.” And even later. “Without you.”

The first time Hannibal killed a man he did so with his hands. It was.. intimate. And he howled at the pain in the fingers he broke as he twisted and keened.

He lay on his back on the grass after. Let his ribs split wide, let his chest open and splay, so his heart could beat out of it. Beat free and wild. Do what it wanted to him. Anything. Kill him if need be. 

Eventually it slowed. 

He ate the man’s heart. Almost raw. It was better than the stones he had sucked to quell the gnawing hunger the winter had wrung.

He kept a chip from the rock he’d used to cave the man’s head in. And a pebble that had sucked all the life from him. Like ice. Like her. Buried beneath the snow.

He went back to the castle only once. For a small wooden cigar box that his sister had kept small treasures in. A bead. A jay’s feather striped with blue. An empty snail shell. A piece of a broken teacup their mother had favoured. A stone with a hole in it, a hag stone, a holey stone, a witch’s stone, a stone that could show you the future if you looked through it right. He’d found it and had held it up for her to see through.

A little laugh like tinkling glass.

What was hell if not the eternal absence of the one whom you loved? Loved more than life? And perhaps it was just the eternal Elysian Fields of childhood but it was a paradise none the less. And it was lost.

For a while he was both watchful and mute.

\+ +

In Paris, a few years later he’d frowned at a stall holder in one of the flea markets along the Seine. Watched as the man slapped a child with the back of his hand. Casually. He’d followed him after dark, the glow of a cigarette end hissing in a gutter. Broke his neck in the quiet of a pissoir. Left him there. Unadorned. 

\+ + +

Will had run his fingers carelessly over the scored wooden cigar box and flipped it open. Seen the weight of the stones. Cool and steady. He’d smiled.

“Geological faults.”

He’d not quite given Hannibal his eyes. Still mapping out their interactions. Tentative. But it had been enough.

A speaking glance.

———

The shadows always reach to where Hannibal stands. Like an insidious creep, seeking him, entangling him. He resists their twisting love. Transforms it. Speaks tongues like fire.

\+ + +

“Blood and breath are only elements undergoing change...”

The neighbour smiles when he reads the words out loud and glances backwards to where Hannibal is standing in the kitchen putting together a plate.

“It’s a beautiful picture. Was he..?”

When Hannibal brings in the tray of refreshments he smiles. Just a little.

“He was.”

The neighbour looks back at the bright smile, a sharp scar on one cheek, silver threading his hair and the scar, though it doesn’t mar the overall impression.

“Yeah.” He says. “I can see that.”

Hannibal nods briefly and offers him three kinds of cake.

He is still in the thrall of some kinds of transformation.

——— + + + ———

La Primavera. She looks back into him. His heart longs for spring, seeks it as only those who have been buried realise they have in truth been planted can.

He carries winter with him. A trail of ice and chill, death dealing, killing not softly but cleanly with a sharp blade and a bright.

He yearns for the quick flame and the leap. For the push and shove back into the light. Sees it in Will’s eyes. The flame he thought extinguished. And even if Will’s brain is on fire Hannibal cannot bring himself to quench it. Better to go down in flames, burning up, than the long slow sleep of the cold. Better than the silence.

Oh the ice of his heart, frozen at that moment in time. That first communion.

\+ + + — — —

His hands. His heart. Strong.

And are both still capable of great acts. 

“Will you forgive me Will?”

As a young man in Florence he thinks of.... he thinks of impossible things that he can’t know yet, like the touch of Will’s face. The fired ice of betrayal. The slip of a daughter’s blood. Revenge.

When he leaves he knows he has left some stones unturned, the hot burn of the young man in the Questura, an enemy saved. For another time.

(A small crumble of brickwork, broken at the edges, Commandatore Pazzi.)

\+ + +

“Find somewhere Hannibal. Where the stones will come easy. Where the stories will.”

“All things are bearable if we tell them in a story.”

Will had wheezed then, with a door hinge of a laugh.

“After. Yes. A gift of stones Hannibal, new stories. And get rid of this drip. You shouldn’t do it to the meat.”

“The pain will be..”

“What? Now I’m telling you to make heart tartare of me, now you get scruples?”

He’d been quiet.

“Ours has been a mutual consumption.”

Will’s face had twitched. Maybe in a smile or an echo of the pain to come.

———

Abigail was a slip of glass only half blunted by the tides.

\+ + +

The place where he lives is near a waterfall. The Lucifer Falls. He knows Will would have laughed at the name. The sound like water over hard quiet stones.

“Oh Hannibal. Still with the word play. Even now.”

And shaken his head. Smiled and smiled and offered himself.

Even now.

\+ — + — +

The sound of the tumbling flow is a shout and calm to him. Eternal. The water takes without heed. Sometimes he makes his way along the path beside the river downstream from the falls. There’s a shallow where bits of smoothed glass and pottery turn up. Sometimes they fit together, even with parts worn away by time and the relentless fray of the stream. He has a small collection now. On the kitchen windowsill. Near a small wooden box. 

He lost the wooden cigar box of his youth some time ago. Some time when they had had to run. After the second escape. Though not the two stones he carried with him always. A pebble with a hole in it and a bit of grey and white fire fused together by impossible force. Both returned to him. Close to his heart.

“I got you a cord. For the witch’s stone. It won’t show.”

Hannibal had nodded and let him fasten it round his neck. A marriage of a kind. Maybe love wasn’t a feeling but a gift of trust given to let yourself know and be known. In the silences as well as in the warm slip of sighing skin.

———

Sometimes, sometimes when they lay together in the panting dark Will would ask him.

“The hematite.”

“Francis.”

“The bite of flint. With the chip.”

“One of Mason Verger’s men.”

Will had smiled and breathed him in. Again and again.

\+ + +

“Was it good to see me Will?”

Will had smiled, his eyes softening as he managed to lace their fingers together. That way Hannibal could pretend Will could still grip, still had force behind the rattle and hum of the intake and exhale of thinning air.

“Good? It was never good Hannibal....”

He’d paused then and Hannibal had waited. And closed his eyes as he brushed his mouth through Will’s hair, over his eyes, ghosting over his lips. He couldn’t understand where the salt water on Will’s cheeks had come from.

He didn’t recognise the strange deserting scrape of a noise. He couldn’t bring himself to watch that fierce light quenched. And not by his hand.

“Goodbye Hannibal.”

He wondered if he had imagined the lost farewell. The last one. Only a whisper. When he had looked again he could see something at the edges of Will’s face. Maybe a smile. 

A life lived without the opportunity for regret would be no life at all. His hand had clenched in the soft pall of Will’s shirt. 

———

His hands are still beautiful. His heart still strong.

Even when they fly. Together.

“It’s beautiful.”

\+ + +

Will had held the small stone of gray and quartz up to the light and turned his knowing gaze on Hannibal.

“I’m not dead yet.”

“No.”

———

Hannibal leans over the desk, runs a finger over the print in the book. Will rests his chin on his shoulder, and reaches a hand round so he can trace the image. Six wings. A shining face. An orb and sceptre. A bright star of the morning, full of grace. He turns his face slightly so he can press a kiss into Hannibal’s hairline just above his temple. A trembling pulse. Fragile. Flickering.

“Another Blake? And yet you have survived every fall Hannibal. Every one.”

“Paradise found then?”

Will had eyed him slowly.

“Aren’t these the Summerlands?”

\+ + +

When Will had finished with his life and breath and all that he illuminated in the world Hannibal had taken his heart. Had taken one mouthful. Somehow it had lost its savour. He begged Will’s forgiveness once again and froze it. Unsure.

Eventually he’d bought a small wooden box and found someone who’d preserve the heart, not too many questions asked. A dry freeze.

———

In Paris and Florence he’d met someone who had briefly reminded him of Will, not in his words, or deeds, but something. Some disdain at the world. Some frustration with it maybe. He’d thought that Anthony would rather enjoy the theatricality of his demise, the fraught display. And Will? Will would know. Would hear it as a siren call, a sailor pulled to his doom unresisting, with open ears.

Would come.

“I forgive you Hannibal”

Even if he dropped it later.

All things that are lost may be regained. All things.

———

Words fall through him like the sun through snow. Everything erodes. Soon, all this, will be lost to the sea. But not them. Not this. These bright and shining words. In the beginning was the word. And the word was.

\+ + +

Hands. Heart. Still strong. Alive.

Just.

“It really is black in the moonlight.”

Scrambling, scrabbling at the stones. Breathing. Breaking. Breathing. 

He still has a pebble from that beach. Grey with a slant of quartz through it. It catches the light sometimes. Dazzles him still. Like Will did.

His hands brought them out of the surf. And he gave every last breath he had, every beat of his heart to save him. Every one. 

It was enough.

But only just.

Will had almost choked on his own blood and broken breath. But somehow they had managed. Somehow they had moved beyond that spill. Save yourself, kill them all.

Bedelia.

Jack.

He picked up a small stone or pebble or smoothed out fragment of other lives each time he ended one. And each time one was ended for him. Near him. With him. Paradise suspended.

Mischa.

Chiyoh.

Will.

Ahh, Will.

When Will managed somehow, with a frown and a small shake of the head to forestall too much enquiry, to restore his old wooden cigar box to him from some frozen FBI evidence room, he hadn’t been able to speak for several days.

Will hadn’t pushed. Just waited. When had they both got so good at waiting? Ah, yes. Those times. Those sea wracked times. That stillness in a living tomb where no light reached, illumination only a wretched greenish glow.

He wondered who Will had managed to persuade to retrieve the box. Hoped it was Jack. Even after everything.

\+ +

“That bit of carnelian. Rough on one side. Agent Starling?”

Hannibal’s face had twitched. Will had always been able to see him, even if he hadn’t always realised quite what he was looking at. But when he did. Ahh. When he did.

———

“Trying my soul Hannibal? Weighing it? Maybe I can’t save myself. Maybe that’s ok.”

“In this long dark?”

“‘Who is he that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array?’”

“And do you magnify me?”

“Haven’t I always?”

\+ + +

Hannibal had been caught again. For the first time, if you listened to Jack. Not by Will’s hand though. And Will waited, somewhere agreed in advance. Just in case. There were always boat engines to be mended, he could knuckle down, stay quiet, just a few strays and something like a shared palace of memories to keep him going when he thought Hannibal might never be free again. He stayed away. Even when Jack came sniffing round. Again. And both of them could only just keep breathing at the thought of all that brilliance trapped and frozen in place.

Until. Well, until Clarice. And a moth fluttering against the glass. Carrying death with it. 

And Jack. Begging in the dark. Again.

Didn’t save her in the end though. Or Jack. His heart finally and forever breaking.

Will was the one who kept Hannibal’s stones. Even if the box was lost only a little later. After Hannibal had finally caught up with Frederick. And they’d had to run. Together. Again. Will held the stories like the calm at the centre of a turbulent maze.

Oh paradise regained.

———

Chiyoh had told him about her prisoner. Hauled up in the glimmering slivy dark. A slick fever of light and play. A guardian of Will’s design. Secret. 

He regretted that they had not returned to see it together and when he had tried to draw what he thought Chiyoh had described Will had only shaken his head.

“He was radiant.”

“A gift?”

Will had handed him a small piece of glass. Still a little sharp on an edge, a catch to it, if you weren’t careful. Chiyoh had restored it to him, understanding that at least.

“I kept this for you.”

And had kissed him. Like it wasn’t the first time. Or it wouldn’t be the last. Like it meant everything. 

\+ + +

His hands are still beautiful and his heart is still strong. But.

What do hearts do when you love that hard? 

“My compassion for you is inconvenient Will.”

When he feels Alana’s life in his hands he remembers. The promises. And feels an emptiness. He couldn’t save him. Not when it counted. Not at the end.

He wants to see his hands bleed. He settles for her blood instead.

His stomach feels full of stones.

There is only silence now.

When he leaves their house he picks up a small piece of gravel from their driveway. It’s grey in the dark of the evening but when he takes it out of his pocket a few weeks later he sees it is a dull red that shines when he washes the earth and dust from it.

———

He gave the key to their apartment to the old woman who minded the door and swept the stairs. Always, in the end he was the one left behind. There was no one else to be strong so he took a deep breath and bumped his bag into the street and the waiting car.

Find somewhere, Will had said, find somewhere where the stones will come easy. Before you.. after you.. with you.. and now? He sighed and maybe the taxi driver felt sorry for the old man with the tears on his face. 

Without you.

The knife in his bag was singing to him. An unrepentant unrefuseable lamentation.

———

“Will you keep your promise Hannibal?”

“Are you asking me not to?”

Will had smiled and leaned forwards into a kiss that was more a share of breath and life than anything else.

“I tolerate. But I won’t berate you for your delight. I know how it was.”

Hannibal had breathed harder and clutched tighter on Will’s arm. Will had hissed a little, that shoulder always and forever the one that gave. Hannibal let up, just a little, just enough. This time.

“I always keep my promises Will.”

“I know.”

———

Chiyoh had died when they had run for the second time. She had paused for an unwise moment and been caught by a bullet meant for him.

He’d found a fragment of porcelain to hallow her name. Will had held him when he found he had no words. Held him after he came back to their home still clutching a bloodied knife in his pocket.

“Frederick was a trap.”

Will had nodded. Something tight around his eyes and the slant of his mouth.

“Always the patsy then.”

\+ + +

“The eating of the heart is a powerful image.”

Who will eat his now? Who even remembers?

A light fallen. Terrible as an army set in battle array.

Lucifer’s bright brilliance dimmed.

They think him a genial curiosity. Quaint even. With his books, and his accent, and his kindness to the neighbour’s dogs. They think him unremarkable and even soft, with his penchant for good food and a decent wine, with his support for the orchestra and his patronage of the gallery and a local artist. They think him a benevolent presence in their midst. He is still smoke and mirrors.

A man goes missing. A violent man, an aggressor, a boor, and no one actually misses him. Even if there’s a fleet of fear when his body is found half torn and shattered. 

His neighbour leans against the door jamb and reminds him to lock up at night, to keep a watchful eye, to be careful.

Hannibal nods to him and asks the neighbour and his wife if they might like to come for dinner some time.

His hands still slip round a knife like a lover. 

— — —

They contour his wrists, a map of both the depths and heights of their lives.. both of them carrying each other’s scars. He asked Will once what had happened to Matthew Brown after he was shot.

“Never asked. Didn’t die though. I’d have heard.”

A slipping blunted blade forgotten in a drawer.

“Out there somewhere then.”

Will had nodded slowly. 

“Another promise?”

“A satisfaction.”

The laugh had been unexpected.

“A collective noun? A satisfaction of promises.”

“If you like.”

“If you do.”

\+ + +

He knows when he starts to catch a light at the corner of his eyes, when he think he sees a movement there, or hears the whisper of a voice. Telling a jigsaw story. He knows.

“Hello Will?”

He lets his fingers run through the stones on his windowsill and glass and fragments of memories click and shine. Oh memory. Oh light.

His neighbour keeps a closer frowning lookout for him. Fetches shopping. Changes his books at the library. The woman takes him to a concert, flattered by his attentiveness, the soft gleam in his eyes. 

There’s nothing he wants from them. 

If hell is other people then this is only a soft limbo. Waiting. Waiting.

His heart leaps in his throat at the slightest thing. Ready.

When it comes it is with a dazzling brightness that burns him from the inside out. This isn’t pain. It is a reckoning.

Oh.

And a forgiveness, an ascension.

“Hello. Dr. Lecter.”

Oh.

Does death come as the end?

“You’re not alone Will. I’m standing right beside you.”

They bury him on a summer’s day in a decent suit under water tumbled stones, with a small wooden box holding something dry and uncertain, and a holey stone on a leather thong round his neck. No one quite sure who the old man was. 

The collection of stones and china from his windowsill are scattered.

His hands are still beautiful. His heart is still.


End file.
